Computers, such as personal computers, are often connected to data networks, such as the Internet, to enable data transfer from one computer to another computer. When multiple computers share large amounts of data, a server is often connected to the data network to provide data to the computers. Servers allow many computers to access information that is stored within the network.
Bladed servers are one type of server. Bladed servers are comprehensive computing systems that typically include a processor, memory, network connections, and associated electronics all on a single or multiple circuit cards called a server blade, for example. Typically, one or more server blades are contained in a chassis, along with server appliance blades, network-switch blades, storage blades, management blades, local area network (LAN) blades, and other blades. These various blades may be mounted in a cabinet or other enclosure.
Other solutions to obtaining the desired density of memory to processor cores employ rack systems to house the required hardware components. In a typical application, several chassis are stacked vertically in vertical rack cabinets or are placed side by side in horizontal rack cabinets. However, rack systems often are more costly to implement than blade systems, and do not have the modularity that makes blade systems attractive.